The Navy potentially violated numerous state and federal laws relating to safe drinking water in its operation and maintenance of its Joint Base Pearl Harbor- Hickam public water system, an investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found.
EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced the probe during a news conference in Honolulu in February after jet fuel from the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility contaminated the JBPHH water system, sickening hundreds of military families.
In addition to longstanding maintenance and operation problems, the investigation found that operators of JBPHH’s public water system were unprepared in the event that fuel contaminated the water, even though it was known that the Navy’s Red Hill fuel tanks posed a high risk.
It’s not clear what the findings mean in regards to the safety of the water relied on by approximately 93,000 people, primarily military families. The EPA refused to answer questions about the report, citing “ongoing enforcement actions.”
The EPA also inspected the public water system operated by the U.S. Army’s Aliamanu Military Reservation, a much smaller system that serves about 6,000 people, and found similar maintenance deficiencies.
EPA investigators conducted their inspections in April and provided their reports to the Navy in May. But the environmental agency didn’t make the documents publicly available until early August, when it quietly posted them on its website without issuing a news release.
The agency said in a statement released Monday that it had given the Navy and Army time to redact information in the reports that contained personally identifiable information or critical security information before posting them.
“In response to the inspection, the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army have taken steps to address EPA’s concerns, and EPA continues to work with them on long-term solutions,” the EPA said in a statement. “Both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army have submitted plans they will take to address all of EPA’s findings.”
Those fixes, according to the EPA’s website, include coming up with a plan to prevent animals from nesting inside JBPHH water storage tanks and removing vegetation around water tanks.
The EPA report notes that the Hawaii Department of Health administers the Public Water System Supervision Program in Hawaii and is the primary regulator of the JBPHH public water system.
Pearl Harbor problems
EPA inspectors detailed a long list of failures in its 32-page report on the Navy’s JBPHH water system, painting a picture of old, rusting pipes, poor maintenance of water tanks and troubling oversight of chemicals and water additives.
They found rusted pump shafts and rusted pipes in the Waiawa shaft and Aiea-Halawa shaft, two out of the three water wells that the Navy has relied on to supply its JBPHH water system. The third well, the Red Hill shaft, still had a visible sheen on the surface of its infiltration tunnel and smelled of fuel when inspectors visited in April.
The Navy has been relying solely on its Waiawa shaft since November, when the Red Hill well was contaminated, which may violate state administrative rules requiring a public water system to have sufficient water to supply all of its customers.
Inspectors also found exposed wiring, rusting, flaking paint, leaking oil and abandoned pumps, and observed that the Navy’s water system lacked a preventative maintenance program, resulting in a reactionary approach to maintenance.
The water system didn’t have an operator safety training program and insufficient operating procedures, according to the EPA.
While the Navy did have standard procedures for monitoring and responding to chlorine and fluoride levels, inspectors found that operators aren’t given specific instructions on replenishing the additives.
“JBPHH public water supply operators stated that supervisors give verbal instructions on when and how to replenish chlorine and fluoride,” according to the report.
Fluoride helps protect people’s teeth, preventing decay, and is used widely throughout the country’s public water systems. However, too much fluoride can have the opposite effect, increasing the risk of tooth decay, studies show, while acute fluoride poisoning can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
The EPA did not respond to questions about whether it’s concerned that fluoride levels in the past may have been too high. A review of JBPHH water reports from recent years did not show exceedances in acceptable fluoride levels.
Inspectors also found incorrect and sloppy storage of chemicals and numerous instances of rusting and pitting water storage tanks. In one instance, a hatch on the roof of a tank was not sealed, allowing geckos to nest inside.
The EPA also found numerous deficiencies with the Red Hill water tanks, one of which had a significant amount of sediment at the bottom. The tank was installed in the mid-1990s and had never been cleaned, according to the agency’s findings.
The EPA did not respond to questions about whether the sediment creates unsafe conditions or how often tanks are supposed to be cleaned.
The report also found that water system operators did not know how long it takes water to move through the distribution system, including storage time. Inspectors were told that a contractor would be performing a fluoride tracer study in April, but the EPA’s report said it never received it.
The EPA’s inspection also delved into the Navy’s response to the November fuel contamination and found that its emergency response plan was lacking. Among other things, the plan didn’t include steps for responding to an uncontrolled release of fuel from Red Hill. There were also communication problems. During the November emergency, customer complaints about water were directed to JBPHH housing managers, but not sent to the potable water branch of Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command.
The report also noted long delays in critical maintenance. Under normal conditions, the Waiawa shaft, constructed in 1949, supplies between 80% and 85% of the supply for JBPHH’s water system. Funding was requested from Congress in 1992 to replace the shaft’s transmission line, but the funding was not approved until the 42-inch cast-iron transmission line failed in 2019, according the report. A $48.3 million construction project to replace the line was nearing completion at the time of this year’s inspection.
Hawaii Sierra Club Director Wayne Tanaka said that the findings were troubling.
“These reports really demonstrated systemic failures and long-standing failures that contributed to the severity of harm that was inflicted on the local families after the most recent spill (at Red Hill),” Tanaka said.
Tanaka said that the reports also expose the failures of regulators over the years to ensure that the Navy was operating the Red Hill fuel facility and its water system safely.
“I’m worried that the EPA is forgetting these lessons of the past and is continuing to give too much deference to the Navy,” said Tanaka.
A Navy spokesperson said that the Navy is working to address the concerns identified in the EPA report and stressed that water tests have shown the water is safe.
“Since the Navy began long-term monitoring of the Navy water distribution system on March 22, the Navy has received over 3,000 EPA drinking water certified lab results from samples, which show that the water distribution system at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam is providing safe drinking water to its users,” the Navy said.
